Innovative, contemporary visual artists, George Taylor and Janice Thwaites are opening their studios at Charlbury near Chipping Norton to coincide with Oxfordshire Artweeks.

George is showing a selection from his wall hung Elemental Series in which he uses acrylic paint to a deliberately restricted, largely blue palette and handmade paper to create abstract, or perhaps more accurately, strongly abstracted images redolent of natural phenomena, not based on specific locations, but on feelings and recollections of lived experience, broadly analogous with the sea and the coast. Or more particularly, the interface and the dynamic interplay between the two. Janice has researched classical, operatic and balletic musical themes to construct wall hung and free standing works for her continuing Silent Music project. She often de-constructs actual musical instruments, and re-assembles them in new forms, or makes drawn and painted images to develop and illustrate her ideas. Janice has been focussing on Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake, in particular the Matthew Bourne version, which is an especial favourite, and has been examining the complex cultural symbolism and metaphor of the black and white swans in visual and conceptual terms, using collage and paint.